A UK Lifestyle Blog

Monthly Archives: February 2017

As you all know by now I love volunteering at parkrun. This week was a parkrun double for me. I volunteered at my usual Lee-on-the-Solent parkrun then on Sunday I headed over to Waterlooville Junior parkrun.

Waterlooville is only half an hour away from where I live so it wasn’t too far to travel. The parkrun is held in Jubilee Park (Milton Road entrance) in Waterlooville so if you’re in the area with a 4-14 year old on a Sunday then why not give them a visit?

The course was a 2 lap course with a small loop then in to the finish funnel. I went along with two friends and their son who initially weren’t going to volunteer but were going to watch and their son was going to run. When we arrived at 8.30 to register as a volunteer there was only Adam, the run director there. He was setting up the course but stopped to have a chat with us. He was really friendly and told us a few snippets of information about the course. They were low on volunteers this week so my friends were quickly roped in to help. One as a marshal and one as Tail Walker (although actually it was a tail run in the end). I was barcode scanning and a bit nervous as I was the only scanner. I’m used to scanning in over 400 runners with three scanners. Luckily it turned out on a very cold February morning only 39 children were to take part.

The junior parkrun is 2km instead of the 5km of a Saturday parkrun. Watching the children was brilliant, especially the two children that led the way. They were fast and pushed hard. It was nice to hear from one of the Mum’s that the first female across the line is part of an athletics club showing she takes her running pretty seriously.

The first male crossed the line in 08:17 and the first female was close behind with 08:25. The final runner crossed the line with a PB of 19:08. She told me friend she turned 4 in September and had taken part in 4 or 5 parkruns. She was just as inspiring as the first runners over the line. 4 years old and a parkrun advocate, brilliant!

As the junior parkrun is 2km, volunteering there really doesn’t take up too much of your time and is really rewarding as you know you’re helping the future generation reach a healthier lifestyle. Why not look up your nearest junior parkrun on the parkrun website and offer some of your time?

Way back in November I signed up to earn the Unicorn medal from Virtual Runner UK and posted about it here. To complete the medal all you had to do was complete 10K in as many different events as you like and you could walk or run.

So here’s my story!

Activity 1 Walk – 2.27 miles 47:50 – Not much to report about this walk and I didn’t take any pictures!

Activity 2 Run/Walk on the treadmill – 3.11 miles 59:12 – This ended up being void as my treadmill reset itself after 30 minutes so I wasn’t able to take a picture of the display showing the whole amount completed. Fail!

Activity 3 Walk – 3.45 miles 1:13 – An early evening beach walk which made for some nice pictures as the sun set.

Activity 4 – Walk 1.96 time unknown – This also ended up being void. Despite setting off with 85% battery on my phone after 0.82 miles my phone died and showed the needs charging sign. I’d barely started my walk but with no recording it kind of made it pointless as I couldn’t submit this as evidence towards the 10K. I turned around and walked home.

Activity 5 – Walk 2.01 43:50 – I had an awful head cold this day but was quickly running out of time to finally reach 10K and submit the details to Virtual Runner.

Finally, after 5 activities I reached 10K! Who knew it would take so long. Pretty sure it won’t have taken anyone else as long as me to achieve this but the main thing is I achieved it. After submitting my results I soon received the medal which is epic!

Really pleased with that. During February I’ll be earning the Love You To The Moon and Back medal which looks like this…

For some reason this post didn’t publish when it was meant to and I didn’t even notice! Bad blogger! So I know it’s late but I thought I’d put it out there since I went to the effort of writing it and collating the pictures so here’s my late review of 2016.

January

Best Nails:

My first ever attempt at a French Manicure turned out surprisingly well.

Favourite Photo:

The sunset at Lee on Solent.

February

Best Nails:

These nails actually don’t look that good at all *blush* but it’s the best from February.

Best Photo:

Sunset at Stokes Bay. No filter was needed for this photograph.

Best Blog Post:
February saw the launch of this blog. I’m choosing How I became a parkrun Volunteer as my best blog post. parkrun is something that means a lot to me so it’s a reflection of who I am.

March

Best Nails:

I love how pink, sparkly and girly OPI’s Princesses Rule is

Best Photo:

The Solent. I remember taking this photo. It was such a warm day for March.

At the end of April Giles, one of the founding members of parkrun and chairman of Gosport Road Runners passed away. People were asked to wear their club vests to the run. I’m not a member of a running club but parkrun is the club I belong to. I didn’t know Giles well at all, I only met him a couple of times but he was adored by many.

Best Picture:

First ice cream of the year. April was so warm!

May

Best Nails:

The Hello Kitty/OPI collaboration. This is Spoken From The Heart

Best Photo:

Weymouth Harbour

Best Blog Post: I got a lot of good feedback on my post parkrun – More than meets the eye People just don’t get to see this side of parkrun and people told me this made them appreciate their parkrun teams even more.

June

Best Nails:

New Look Pure Gel is the best home gel nail varnish I’ve found.

Best Photo:

Spinnaker Tower taken from the Gosport Ferry

Best Blog Posts: In June I did my own Travel Guide for London,Scotland and Florida. I tried to include some of the none tourist sites so there were new things for people to try.

July

Best Nails:

Best Photo:

I reached my 50 milestone for volunteering at parkrun.

Best Blog Post:
This is the blog post that has the most views on my blog – It’s the information post of when the Disney X Cath Kidston collaboration was announced.

August

Best Nails:

In August I learnt to do my own gel nails.

Best Photo:

In August I passed my driving test and drove myself to my home town, Sheffield!

So January has been and gone. I haven’t blogged a lot in January but to be honest I haven’t done a lot and I only want to blog when I have something to blog about. In January I’ve been working really hard and this has taken a bit of a toll on my health. I’ve had a constant cold and sore throat as a result of being run down. It feels crazy to be run down when we only just had the Christmas break but that’s where I’m at.

So on to the round up. In January it was my Birthday. I received some lovely presents from family and friends and celebrated with plenty of yummy food. Whilst at West Quay for my birthday lunch I found these gorgeous Kilner jars in John Lewis. I have never seen jars with the coloured lids like these. So I snapped up two of each colour. They were reduced in the January sales too which made them even sweeter.

I also did gel nails for my birthday. My nails are seriously weak though after removing them 🙁

During January I also worked hard on achieving the unicorn medal I mentioned in my previous post I Am A Unicorn way back in November. This should have been easily achievable but with a malfunctioning treadmill and a phone dying instead of recording my walk I actually had to do a lot more than the given 10K distance. There’s a review of how I achieved it coming up but here’s a picture I took on one of the walks.

I thought I’d see how I was going with my 2017 goals too. Hopefully by revisiting them each month it’ll keep them fresh in my memory.

Health – Taking charge – I’m now taking both healthy breakfasts and lunches to work and I have stuck to this throughout January. I’ve also cooked a lot more in an evening so these meals are healthier too. I’ve mainly been using Joe Wicks Cook Books.

Read – Lots More Books – I’m on my third book of the year.

parkrun – I haven’t completed one. I have completed 3 5K walks in January though. Still suffering terribly with the leg pain that stopped me running in the first place though.

Be Me – I turned down the opportunity to go out out and confidently said “That’s not me” and it was ok!

Pretty pleased with how I’m going with my goals so far. Looking forward to seeing how I get on in February. I think my first goal will be helped by lighter evenings and warmer weather!

And to finish, if you missed any of my posts during January here they are again: